A cloud service generally refers to a service that allows end recipient computer systems, e.g., thin clients, portable computers, smart phones, desktop computers, other applications, services or systems, to access a pool of hosted computing and/or storage resources, e.g., the cloud resources over a network such as the Internet, for example. In this manner, the host, a cloud service provider, may, for example, provide Software as a Service (SaaS) by hosting applications, Infrastructure as Service (IaaS) by hosting equipment (servers, storage components, network components, etc.), or a Platform as a Service (PaaS) by hosting a computing platform (operating system, middleware, data bases, autoscaling infrastructure, etc.).
A cloud service can incur charges on a demand basis, such as during provisioning or lifecycle management (for a private cloud service there may, or may not, be meterings and accounting charges allocated). The cloud service can be managed by a cloud service provider and may be scaled by an end user, e.g., according to desired storage capacity, processing power, network bandwidth, etc. The cloud service may be a public service or a limited access private service that is provided over a private network, e.g., a business enterprise network. The cloud service may be a managed cloud service, private or hosted, such as a virtual private cloud service, or may be a hybrid cloud service that is a combination of various configurations and services. Traditionally, when a user develops a cloud service, the user may perform various actions related to deploying and configuring computing resources associated with the ordered cloud service such as deployment of virtual machines (VMs), middleware, application software, and application components) on the provisioned/instantiated infrastructure.